Field of the Invention
The invention relates to flash memories, and more particularly to management of blocks of flash memories.
Description of the Related Art
A flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. A flash memory is primarily used in memory cards, USB flash drives, solid-state drives, and similar products, for general storage and transfer of data. Example devices for applications of a flash memory include personal computers, PDAs, digital audio players, digital cameras, mobile phones, video games, and so on. In addition to being non-volatile, flash memory offers fast read access times, as fast as dynamic RAM, although not as fast as static RAM or ROM. A flash memory now costs far less than byte-programmable EEPROM and has become the dominant memory type for when a significant amount of non-volatile, solid state storage is needed. Thus, a method for appropriately managing a flash memory is required to improve the performance of the flash memory.